Jack-o-Lantern time

So because we finally live in an apartment that might be visited by Trick-or-Treaters we decided it would be appropriate if we had a jack-o-lantern. Because my family has a long tradition of having politically themed jack-o-lanterns I realized that I needed to come up with an appropriate and well-known figure on the Canadian political scene to morph into a jack-o-lantern.

Of course, it didn't take long to narrow the pack to Darryl Dexter and Stephen Harper. Given Dexter's more limited weight on the national stage Harper became the choice by default.

The next part of the project was to figure out how to get Harper's face on a pumpkin. At first I tried to find a stencil online. Much to my surprise I was almost immediately successful.

Harper

Not too long ago the Globe and Mail made the above stencil available to the public. Sadly, this wasn't exactly what I was looking for. I was less interested in caricature and more interested in just a standard rendering of Harper.

After we purchased our pumpkin last night I settled on making my own stencil, even though I had no idea how I would go about such a task.

This morning I started my stencil making project by looking for suitable photos of Harper. Almost immediately I came across the classic Harper and kitty shot.

I then chopped the head out and started to turn it into a stencil.

After just a few iterations I had something I thought I could work with.

With my stencil now in hand I was reading to start the carving process. To start I affixed the
stencil to the pumpkin and began tracing the black areas by jabbing the pumpkin with a pin. After maybe twenty minutes I had a largely useless partial outline of the stencil. Eventually I reattached the stencil and began re-tracing the black areas with a knife.

Eventually the face began to take shape from the mass of the pumpkin. And then almost immediately it was clearly a face, if not clearly Harper's face.

Now that I have had a chance to examine my work my guess is that my stencil wasn't quite as good as I thought it was. Maybe it was also a little too large? Anyway, I think I will need to work on my technique a little for next year's iteration.

At the moment I suspect that my pumpkin would really only be recognizable in the following context.

And that's hardly a context in which I can display the pumpkin.

A big week for federal appointments

It seems that just a little while ago Harper announced the replacement for outgoing Auditor General Sheila Fraser. Michael Ferguson, Deputy Minister and former Auditor General in New Brunswick, will be the government's nominee.

What seems immediately notable about Mr. Ferguson is that he seems to have spent most, if not all, of his career in a variety of jobs in public service in New Brunswick. This is in contrast to Ms. Fraser who spent a years working in a number of capacities, including in the Office of the Auditor General, before she became the Auditor General. While I know next to nothing about Mr. Ferguson, it does seem at least noteworthy that an internal candidate was not the nominee.

The other big appointment news of the past few days were the two Supreme Court of Canada nominations from last week.

I found the following passage from Harper's press release on the subject particularly noteworthy.

Both candidates were highly recommended to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada following comprehensive consultations with the Attorney General of Ontario, senior members of the Canadian Judiciary, prominent legal organizations and members of the public.

Even if these appointments are 'Ontario appointments' it seems a little strange that Ontario was the only province consulted on the matter. Even if the appointees are to come from Ontario (a practice that might need review given than in more than 60 years Newfoundland has never had a judge on the court), their rulings will impact the entire country. Thus broader consultation seems justified if not essential.

This is big

In 2008 Harper almost lost his minority government (at least in part) because he was considering the elimination of per vote subsidies to political parties. It seems that now that Harper has a majority he is planning on re-introducing the plan. Assuming all goes according to plan in just a few years the per-vote subsidy will be completely phased out.

Given the relatively strict limitations on party contributions, this change will likely have a significant impact on the major Canadian parties. Who knows, maybe some parties will no longer be viable entities.

Whether you are a fan of these subsidies or not this change is big and will likely have a pretty significant impact on the way political parties at the federal level operate in Canada.

Signage Update

Since my post yesterday about the addition of 'Harper' cut-outs to stop signs in Wolfville I have received reports from both Toronto and St. John's to noting that similarly amended signs had been seen there as well.

I guess that this isn't as exclusively local an initiative as I first thought it might be. Now I am curious how widespread the phenomenon is? And will this be a regular occurrence now that we have a Harper majority government?

I guess I will just have to wait and see.

New Signage for Canada Day

Yesterday as Jeannette and I were making our way through downtown Wolfvill we noticed that many of the stop signs had been modified (perhaps in accordance with the views of the region?).

Throughout the day, as we saw more and more of Wolfville, we noticed that quite large number of stop signs had been modified in this way.

I am curious to know how long these modifications will manage to stick around.

A Few Quick Notes 537

-We are presently in the midst of another grey day in Halifax. Fortunately, at least so far today doesn't seem quite as rainy as yesterday was.

-Shortly after I woke up this morning I was sitting at my desk checking my email when I noticed a German shepherd-like dog walk past my window. A few moments later the dog was followed by his two police handlers. Though the dog was sniffing aggressively I got the sense that they didn't find whatever it was they were looking for.

-Apparently 'Steven' Harper is finally coming to Nova Scotia for a rally today. Of course because it is in Windsor instead of Halifax I won't even be able to consider attending, and I have no idea whether or not it will be open to the public or not - or if prospective attendees will have to register in advance and then be screened.

-There is a pretty good sale today at Strange Adventures in Halifax. I bought a copy of Power Grid and an expansion map.

A Few Quick Notes 528

-Today has been grey all day, though it did take a few hours for this to turn to honest-to-goodness rain. Fortunately, at least for the time being, the rain seems to have stopped.

-I am now down to 4 for 32 in this year's RUTRTW contest. This are definitely now completely off the rails and I am kind of enjoying it.

-Tonight, for the first time this year, I used a barbecue to cook dinner. Everyone seemed pretty pleased with the resulting burgers. I hope tomorrow's sausages are received as positively.



[Embedded video]

As you can see, things were a little smokey at first. Fortunately it only took a little while for things to calm down.

-It seems that Harper and his party have recently come under fire for tossing students from their events. CBC recently posted a great back and forth between Soudas, a Harper spokesperson, and a reporter about these incidents. Soudas's active avoidance of the questions would be impressive if it wasn't quite so frustrating.

-I am incredibly tired right now. I guess I will go to bed shortly.

You've got to be kidding me

The Chronicle Herald is reporting that several 'deregistered' lobbyists are working for the Conservative campaign and that the Commissioner of Lobbying has suggested that registered lobbyists are prohibited from participating in the campaign. It seems that the latter portion of this story broke a few days ago on the Canadian politics blogs.

The Chronicle Herald quotes Shepherd, in an email to registered lobbyists, as suggesting that

"Working on a political campaign to support the election of a public office holder is, in my opinion, advancing the private interest of that public office holder," she wrote. "A real or apparent conflict of interest can be created when a lobbyist engages in political activities that advance the private interest of a public office holder, while at the same time, or subsequently, seeking to lobby that public office holder."

It seems that the same, if not more, problems are likely present when 'deregistered' lobbyists (particularly those who just don't happen to be lobbying at the moment) participate in political campaigns. It should also be noted that all kinds of people who engage in lobbying activities that don't require reporting could also be participating in various political campaigns - there just isn't a good way of knowing.

That a situation could be created where an MP/Minister/Prime Minister feels that they owe their position to the campaign efforts of a particular lobbyist is scary and seems to completely undermine any attempt that has thus far been implemented to regulate lobbying. This loophole seems to provide a way for 'deregistered' lobbyists to have more access to political actors than they would be able to have if they were registered and thus provides a potential incentive to 'deregister' as a way of gaining more access to politicians.

So not only does this practice provide us with more evidence that the effectiveness of the lobbying regime likely quite limited, it also demonstrates that a number of individuals have figured out ways to get close to politicians that aren't obviously in contravention of the lobbying rules.

I guess we can now wait and see whether or not this becomes a big story or if it just blows over. Given the recent Bruce Carson pseudo-lobbying thing it wouldn't surprise me if this got at least a little traction.

A Few Quick Notes 525

-We had another beautiful day in Halifax.

-I will soon be adding another RUTRTW rim to my tally, but before unrolling the rim I will have to finish my coffee.

-Apparently Harper is scheduled to make a campaign stop in Halifax tomorrow. Of course, that this is to take place isn't particularly clear on the website. What little information I do have seems to suggest that this may be a media only event - a type of event that I think shouldn't exist.

-We will soon be watching the penultimate episode of Republic of Doyle for the season. Hopefully a Doyle Pitch or two will be written during the episode.

-In advance of the laundry price increase that is due to be implemented tomorrow we have all been doing laundry tonight. I think that we have all managed to do as much laundry as possible.

Twitter and the 2011 election campaign

So, for about the past 36 hours Canada has been in the midst of a federal election campaign. And aside from discussions of the willingness of various parties to enter coalitions with one another other, the topic that I have seen receive the most attention is Twitter use by politicians and staffers. Given the recent surge in the use of of this platform, and that this will be the first Canadian election to have all major party leaders with fully active accounts it seems not entirely surprising that there has been some discussion about the appropriate means of navigating this new landscape

Almost immediately a number of MPs and Cabinet ministers modified their Twitter names to reflect that they no longer MPs (though the Cabinet ministers still are Cabinet ministers). While a number of opposition types have changed their names, the accounts that seem the most important are those of Cabinet ministers, particularly those ministers who have been using their accounts to make policy announcements (in particular people like Tony Clement).

As I noted a few weeks ago, I think that this melding of public and private personas is potentially problematic and could lead to confusion about the status of certain statements. For instance, are we to now think that all of Tony Clement's old tweets are nothing more than partisan rhetoric (as they came from the account that he is now using and are still accessible through this account). Or are I am to somehow know that those old tweets were written by Tony Clement the Minister and these two tweets are being written by Tony Clement the candidate? And even if this distinction is clear currently, will it be so clear to someone who goes back through these tweets at some point in the future to follow political communications?

To some extent this confusion is already evident. Throughout the day CBC's Kady O'Malley has been tweeting about the fact that Harper's verified Twitter account had until Saturday been used as a non-partisan vehicle but has now started to carry partisan messages. After a quick check of old tweets it became clear that this account's first tweets were partisan messages in the run up to the 2008 election. Given the clearly partisan provenance of this account how are we to understand the content during non-election times? Does this account represent Stephen Harper the Prime Minister or Stephen Harper the Conservative Party of Canada leader? Given that the account has been used for both government policy announcements and partisan messages I think that it is fair to be somewhat confused.

I guess I am now hoping that one of the things this election accomplishes is the creation a slightly better understanding of how politicians should engage with social media applications and how we, as members of the public, are able to differentiate between the nature of the statements made by individuals with a variety of different roles and communications platforms. Whether this new understanding comes to fruition or not, I am sure that applications like Twitter will play more of a role than they have in past elections and that this role is only bound to increase as time passes.